Wanting to build a gas station in 1/25 scale

I'm wanting to start adding buildings to put with my model cars, and was wondering the best way to make a 1/25 scale of an old time gas station. Recently, I have gotten into the whole Route 66 mystique, going as far as getting a documentary of Route 66, and I guess falling in love with the different changes that are found along the way. As I was watching the doc, there was an old Standard Oil Co. station in Odell, Illinois that looked pretty cool to me. To make a long story short, I was curious how to take a real building, and make it into a 1/25 scale replica. Do you get the dimensions of the real building, and divide the inches by 25? I want the scene to look as realistic as possible. Thanks.

My suggestion would be to look back through some of the past posts in this topic and see what some of the others have done. Another idea would be to look through some Model Railroading magazines and books for ideas on how to build a building. Also I am sure Kalmbach publishing would also have books available. Good luck in your building. For me the research is a large part of the fun of building.

Converting 1:1 to 1:25 - I measure the 1:1 object in inches, and put that down in millimeters for 1:25 scale (since an inch is 25.4 mm).

Search for a build here on the dio forum called someting like 'Texaco station in 1977'. I think he actually went there and measured the building, made drawings in Autocad, printed out the drawings and copied/traced the blueprint onto the gatorboard (?) he used for the building.

You can take pictures of a building, square from each side if you can, and if there is one object in the picture whose size you know (eg. you set down a yard/meter long stick by the wall) you can measure everything off the picture on your screen at home. I draw a grid over an image using Paint (a Windows drawing program) that helps measure what is what. I just place a plastic ruler over the screen...

If you take screenshots out of the documentary you mentioned, and the images are from an angle, you can get (an old cheap version of) Photoshop and 'stretch' the image square, so that you can take detail/section measurements off it.

For an overall floor plan / roof outline of a building even a google satellite image can be of help, if the resolution is good enough.

I'm currently building that same Texaco diorama.. Having a lot of fun with it... Built mine using sheet styrene and foamboard.. I would however recommend that you make the building a little deeper than plans.. Once you add detail like garage items the cars fitting in will be a tight squeeze.. Good luck and have fun with it.